U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, has defended “my friend” Vice President Mike Pence and compared the openly gay Mayor of South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg, to Jussie Smollett in an interview on Fox News.

Speaking to Martha MacCallum on “The Story” Thursday evening, Grenell brought up the recent spat between the two Hoosiers. Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential hopeful, has been very vocal about Pence’s career-long attacks on LGBTQ rights.

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“Mayor Pete has been pushing this hate hoax, along the lines of Jussie Smollett, for a very long time now, several weeks. And I find it really ironic that Mayor Pete stayed silent about the so-called hate hoax on him and others during 2015, 2016, 2017 when Mike Pence was governor. There was total silence. It’s ironic that right about now when he’s starting his fundraising apparatus to run for president that he comes up with this idea and this attack.”

The controversial conservative gay Trump ally took his time to defend Mike Pence’s character, despite the VP’s actions and statements on transgender people, marriage equality, HIV, hate crimes, and LGBTQ discrimination throughout the years.

“One of the things that really bothers me about this attack is that Mike Pence is a friend of mine,” he continued. “Mike and Karen are great people, they’re godly people, they’re followers of Christ. They don’t have hate in their heart for anyone. They know my partner. They have accepted us."

He also took the opportunity to throw the LGBTQ community — as a whole — under the bus.

"The gay community used to be the community pushing tolerance and diversity. We were the ones that were saying everyone should be able to love and accept each other. Now suddenly there’s a whole community of people demanding that we all think alike. I think it’s outrageous. When Mayor Pete came out the vice president complimented him and said he holds him in high regard. The vice president or then governor has said nothing but positive things about Mayor Pete. I think this is a total hate hoax and I think it’s outrageous.”

When he was criticized on Twitter for going on TV to talk about a presidential candidate as a sitting U.S. Ambassador, he replied, “My friend was attacked. I’m defending my friend from a terrible & erroneous charge of homophobia. And I’m gay.”

Friday morning he reweeted the “proof” that Pence is a trustworthy friend of the gays — a 2015 tweet written by then-Gov. Mike Pence, which reads, “If I saw a restaurant owner refusing to serve a gay couple, I wouldn’t eat there anymore.”

“The hate hoax being perpetrated on my friend @VP Mike Pence is sadly tied to a political fundraising strategy. Mayor Pete was silent for years - I’m outraged by his phony outrage," Grenell wrote.

In February the White House announced that Grenell had been chosen to lead a global campaign to end homophobia. Critics have said that his “sudden interest in Iran’s anti-gay laws is strikingly similar to Trump’s rhetoric after the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida,” in which Trump used the tragedy as a way to draw support for his anti-Muslim agenda, according to Out.

“Grennell is taking similar actions with Iran — trying to reach an economic goal by painting the administration’s opponent as anti-gay," Mathew Rodriguez wrote.